Daily Archives: September 9, 2014

I am returning to my series of articles about the pathologies that have caused the Department of Justice (DOJ) to suffer a strategic failure in prosecuting the banksters that led the three fraud epidemics that caused the financial crisis and the Great Recession. I have been inspired by Tom Frank’s column in Salon covering our successful defense of a mortgage fraud case in Sacramento. This column addresses the single most offensive thing I learned in the course of that case. Under U.S. Attorney Ben Wagner’s leadership the Eastern District of California has begun targeting immigrants of Russian descent for mortgage fraud prosecutions.

The “no” campaign against independence has reached the stage of endgame panic that leads to desperately throwing charges and publicity stunts at what the polls indicate are increasing support for independence among Scots. Over the last several days we have seen a new anti-independence troika emerge – Gordon Brown, Mick Jagger, and Paul Krugman. I have written previously about the unintended self-parody of making a “rogue” like Brown the “spearhead” of the joint effort by the Tories, Labor, and the (vanishing Lib-Dems) to convince the Scots not to reclaim their independence. (Note to the “better together” opponents of independence – “spear” metaphors aimed at the Scots are best avoided, particularly when wielded by the kind of Scottish “rogues” that Burns denounced in his famous poem about the corrupt and treasonous origins of Scotland’s “union” with Great Britain.)